sábado, 6 de agosto de 2016

The ninja

The city below was pretty much silent. It
was very dark and lonely and the sun wasn’t going to rise for another four
hours. People would be starting their day in some time but in those moments
they were sleeping, barely imagining what was happening on their rooftops.

A group of three people were chasing another
one that had a very big lead in their chase. The character they were chasing
was wearing a ninja outfit, all the uniform being black and his eyes being the
only thing the people that were chasing him could distinguish from the darkness
of the night.

As they jumped from one roof to the other, one
of the persecutors slipped on the edge of the building and fell backwards,
being caught in the last second by one of his peers. The woman that had gotten
hold of his ankle, could barely cope with the weight of her companion. The
other man that came with them, the one closest to the ninja, stopped short from
jumping to the next building and went back to his companions to help the woman
lift their buddy to the rooftop.

The ninja stopped running when he didn’t hear
the sound of steps following him anymore. He turned around and looked on, as
the man and the woman pulled their friend towards them, saving their life. The
ninja blinked several times, very confused. He started to sweat right then, and
not before when he was running.

The man that had almost fallen realized the
ninja was looking at them and attempted to stand up and chase him again but as
he tried standing up, he felt terrible pain in his ankle, the one that his
companion had grabbed him by. Apparently, in all that chaos, he had hurt
himself so bad that he couldn’t walk by himself. His two friends helped him up
again and, when he tried to locate the ninja again, he didn’t saw anyone
anywhere.

Hours later, the persecutors were in a
hospital. The one in the bed, named Kevin, was asleep and the other two, Martha
and Philip, were also asleep but in two armchairs in front of the bed. It was
the middle of the day, a warm day outside. As they slept, the ninja appeared
out of nowhere, standing in a corner, and just looking at the three of them. He
walked, making no noise, towards Kevin in the bed.

He looked at his leg, which was in a cast and
elevated to avoid pain. The ninja looked at it, with the clear intention of
doing something, but he didn’t. The movement of his hands, the sweat drops on
his forehead, were telling of how nervous he was to be there. Outside, a door
was slammed just as he had been looking at Kevin very closely. When the patient
opened his eyes, the doctor was there. He had dreamt again about the ninja.

Many days afterwards, Kevin was recuperating
in his house. He had flowers all over the place and had visitors almost every
day. He had never felt so popular in the agency and had to make an effort not
to look to annoyed by the amount of people coming and going from his home. He
knew they all did it out of concern for him but he also knew they came because
they wanted to know more about the mysterious ninja figure he almost died because.

Everyone wanted to know what he had seen about
him. The truth was that Kevin had consciously tried to stop recalling those
moments because when he fell asleep, he would always relive the moment he fell
and it wasn’t something very fun to experience. It felt as if the floor was
suddenly removed from beneath his feet and he didn’t thought that was something
great to tell anyone.

But people knew how adamant he had been before
the mission to catch the ninja. After all, he had attacked them before, as they
tried to infiltrate a chemical plant, several months ago. As security agents,
they were tasked with a lot of different mission in order to preserve the order
in the world and in the country. The man and women of that agency were just the
best of the best, always being very good at handling themselves and their
opinions in front of people and under pressure.

However, with the ninja, Kevin easily lost his
mind. After he had seen him kill some people in order to steal some classified
documents, Kevin realized the ninja was a persona that had no moral compass and
that seemed to work for anyone who paid the price he asked for. He was only a
mercenary and those people were sickening to Kevin as they just sold themselves
for whatever they asked in order to be able to kill for sport.

When they met the first time, Kevin fought the
ninja for a long time before they had to declare the fight a draw and just run
out of the chemical plant before it blew to the sky. From that moment on, Kevin
tried to investigate whatever he could about the ninja but he was very
unsuccessful. In other encounters, and there were not many, he tried to get
some DNA to use a sample for testing but the ninja did not spit and it was very
hard to grab his head.

He even scouted the places of their fights in
order to pick up anything he might be able to do but there was nothing or, at
least, nothing important enough to pinpoint any particularities about this
person. The worst thing was that Kevin had realized some of the moves the ninja
used were the ones they learned at the academy.

He talked with one of the trainers there who
assured him that no one outside the agency knew about many of those moves as
they were created specifically for some exact situations and in order to use
maximum force if necessary. That was the first real clue Kevin got. But he
failed to tell his companions before the rooftop mission and, when he told them
in the hospital, they were very mad at him for not revealing something so
important to them.

They decided to launch a full investigation
and they had to check every single agent that had deserted the agency. They
even did some surveillance work on some of them, discovering how boring
people’s lives were when they wanted to be far away from all the chaos of the agency.
But none of those guys, none of that people had any similarities or set of
skills that resembled the ones of the ninja.

Frustrated, Kevin returned to proper work
after being a full week in the hospital. He had to use a crutch to walk but the
pain was much less intense than before. He was assigned some office work in the
agency and tried to forget all about the ninja killer. After much thought, it
was obvious that person didn’t wanted to be caught and, he had been an agent,
he wasn’t going to be so stupid as to leave any single clue around. After all
it was a game of intellects to the end, in order to see who survived and who
did not.

As he thought this in his office, Kevin almost
fell from his chair because he had realized something: when checking past
agents, he had omitted to check on the deceased ones. It was a long shot but he
decided to try to find the ninja there. In order not to be reprimanded by his
superiors, he took copies of the files and took them home with no one knowing.
Each night, he would check some of them and then fall asleep as he read them
all.

Almost a month after the incident in the
rooftop, the ninja appeared in his room as he slept. He came closely to the
desk and grabbed his file: it had been there all along but Kevin had not wanted
to look at it. The ninja read it and then looked at the agent. He left the file
back in the desk. As his eyes became watery, he leaned down to kiss Kevin on
the cheek. Caught of guard, Kevin grabbed him by the neck and slammed him to
the floor. With a fast move of the hand, he removed the ninja’s mask.

As in a horror movie, Kevin pulled away from
the dizzy ninja with wide opened eyes. He was seeing a ghost, one he had not
wanted to see. He had a scar on his face and he looked paler than ever. His
eyes looked empty and his body seemed to be fitter than he remembered it. But
it was him. It was really him, his husband, just back from the dead as if
nothing had happened.